Alex Inglethorpe has been Liverpool’s academy director since 2014, and the office he works from at the club’s AXA Training Centre reveals plenty about what the job is for. Among the first things a visitor notices is a framed photograph gifted by Trent Alexander-Arnold, taken in 2019, showing the pair watching a game together. Alexander-Arnold left for Real Madrid last year after 20 years at Liverpool, a spell that began when he joined as a six-year-old in 2004 and ended with the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup, League Cup, Community Shield, UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup.
“The ideal for any academy, and certainly for us, is wanting young players – and hopefully they’re local players – to improve the first team and in doing so, they come and win trophies,” Inglethorpe says. “At Liverpool the bar is high, so to have a player capable of winning everything that you could possibly win is a dream.”
Inglethorpe and his staff oversee the development of the club’s younger players and keep the academy aligned with the first team. A phrase used around Kirkby captures the distance between the two worlds: the first-team pitch is only 300 metres from the academy building, but the journey might take 10 years.
Under new boss Andoni Iraola, that journey has already been shortened for several players. Rio Ngumoha, Trey Nyoni, Lewis Koumas and James McConnell, all of whom have spent time at the academy, have featured this season. “We were fortunate because of how the calendar worked, with players still at the World Cup and a delayed return. Andoni and his staff spent a lot of his first week here watching the academy,” Inglethorpe says. “So we felt ahead, in terms of building a relationship from the outset.”
Standards at Kirkby extend well beyond the pitch. Phones are handed in each morning, and there is a clause in contracts imposing a maximum engine size limit on the cars driven into academy premises. “It comes back to passing your audition. First impressions matter,” Inglethorpe says. “Often before you’ve kicked a ball, the car you drive or the watch you wear can have an impact on how you’re thought of – and that could be first team staff or players looking at you. We’ve believed in the idea of ‘earning the right’ for some time.”
Two recent moves illustrate the market Liverpool are operating in. Last week Manchester United signed 16-year-old winger Isaac Konde from Liverpool on a one-year scholarship followed by a five-year professional deal, with both clubs now in talks over a compensation package. In February, a tribunal ruled Liverpool must pay at least £2.8m to Chelsea for Ngumoha, the 18-year-old who left Chelsea in September 2024 and signed his first professional contract a year later.
“It’s always a compliment when other clubs want your players as it means you’re doing something right,” Inglethorpe says. “But I think the market of players at 16 is distorted because of Brexit and because you can’t recruit like you would do before. There’s always been movement of players but it feels a little more extreme now. When there’s a clamour for talent – fees, wages and everything else will shift accordingly, so it’s dealing with what we have and adapting to a new situation.” Liverpool’s belief is that they have been sensible and responsible with a view to deferred gratification in most cases, though the wage structure is currently under review.
Curtis Jones’s move to Inter Milan in the summer left Liverpool without a first-team player born in the city. “I acknowledge the fact that ideally Liverpool would love to have a team full of Scousers,” Inglethorpe says. “But it is testament to the supporters that if you adopt the characteristics of a Scouser – and you only have to see the likes of Bill Shankly, Kenny Dalglish and others over the years – you can be treated as one of their own. So if you are fearless, passionate, play tough and demonstrate those qualities, then it doesn’t matter if you’ve come from an L1 postcode and got a purple bin or not. That’s the beauty of the club and the crowd.”
One name to keep an eye on is 15-year-old midfielder Luca Eden. Born in the Wirral and already capped by England at youth level, he became the youngest player to feature in the UEFA Youth League for Liverpool last month, beating a record previously held by Joshua Abe, Ngumoha and Alexander-Arnold. “We’ve got plenty of Scousers in the academy and plenty who I think will play for the club. But if not and a lad comes from Warrington or wherever, that’s not a problem,” Inglethorpe insists.
Letting players go remains one of the most challenging parts of the role, and Liverpool released eight players from their academy set-up at the end of last season. Inglethorpe points out that Harry Kane, who was coming through the academy at Spurs when he was a youth coach there, and Alexander-Arnold were not necessarily the best in their respective youth cohorts. “At that stage, there’s too many unknowns. You can’t predict how players will react to adversity and natural bumps in the road,” he says. “I’ve been proven wrong so many times in the past. A good example would be Jarell – someone who was always liked and never in danger of leaving but probably never seen in the top three in the group.”
Quansah left Liverpool for Bayer Leverkusen in 2025 and has since won eight caps for England. “There are no certainties – the point of the academy is to allow them to fulfil their potential,” Inglethorpe says. “Sometimes players need to leave to gain an opportunity. There are lots of lovely examples of boys leaving and having good careers, and I’m not convinced they would have had the same career if they stayed at Liverpool. The linear and most productive way is to break in, but there’s different pathways that can lead back to playing for Liverpool – and that is the dream.”
Just before the academy players go on the pitch there is a sign that reads “Don’t look sideways”, a reference to where the first team train. Next month will mark 14 years at Liverpool for Inglethorpe. “Anyone would want to take something on and leave it in a better place, and I think we’ve done that,” he says. “Ultimately we have had players in the first team winning major trophies and we’re fortunate to be part of that era.”
The standout moment came in the 2024 Carabao Cup final, when Liverpool beat Chelsea. Faced with an injury crisis, Jurgen Klopp relied heavily on academy players and finished the match with a side whose average age was under 22, later calling it his “most special trophy”. “It’s definitely a moment in time. The longer the game went on, Jurgen was taking off the seniors and putting another one of the boys on. It was an incredible show of belief,” Inglethorpe says.
On another wall of his office hangs a magnetic board with headshots of every academy player on the left and the first-team squad on the right – the motive being for everyone to make the journey across it. With a £20m revamp of the academy facility planned to be completed by 2028, the determination to carry on producing first-team players is stronger than ever. “There are exciting times ahead with the potential for the other end, and I’m really excited for the future,” Inglethorpe says. “In Julian Ward [the new sporting director], we have someone who is hugely invested in the academy and has been on this journey for a long time.”